1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns a tape of connections used during mounting on automated assembly or production lines for SMC, namely surface-mounted components. This tape of connections is adapted to components having two electrodes on two opposite faces of their body. They are either ceramic disk capacitors or varistors, or diode chips or parallelepiped-shaped components.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is known that surface mounting is a technology providing high gains in productivity, in association with automatic implanting machines, and that this technology prevents the printed circuits or ceramic substrates from being pierced by wires: this is a necessary feature in components having axial or lateral outputs. But it requires the components to be provided with at least two access connections on one and the same face of the component, so that it can be brazed to a face of the supporting substrate. The advantages provided by SMC technology are worthwhile only if the SMC components are themselves produced in large batches on automated assembly lines.
The invention meets this requirement by proposing a metallic tape, suited to assembly line production. This tape, perforated on its edges to provide for its feeding motion and positioning, supports a plurality of sets of previously cut out connections. When considered for one component, a set of connections has two external connection strips, transversal to the tape, each of these strips being fixedly joined to a contact element with a view to being brazed to the component disk. The two contact elements are cut out, in the flat tape, with an imbricated or hooked shape so that, after a double folding which creates the space for inserting the component between them, there is a superimposition of a part of the contact elements which thus form a clip holding the component. The two superimposed parts of the contact elements are further provided with soldering given in an appropriate form (preform, solder paste etc.) in such a way that it suffices to heat it in a through-type furnace or with a micro-soldering machine, after the insertion of the component, for it to be brazed and provided with two external connections, located in one and the same plane and each forming an extension of the other.